How Olive Morris fought against racial discrimination, housing inequality and prejudice in Brixton 

Olive Morris, British Black Panther, activist, squatter and housing campaigner, has been commemorated with a blue plaque at 121 Railton Road, Brixton.

On November 15, 1969, Nigerian diplomat Clement Gomwalk was confronted by cops while parked outside Desmond’s Hip City, the first black record shop in Brixton.

The Mercedes-Benz car he was driving had a different number on the licence plate to that on the licence disc. Met officers dragged him from the car and questioned him under the ‘sus law’ – a stop and search power based purely on suspicion.

A crowd formed around the commotion. A young woman, Olive Morris, broke through the wall of bodies and tried to prevent Mr Gomwalk’s arrest.

She was handcuffed, but fought back. Police arrested her on charges of assault and bundled her into a police van.

After police released her from the station some hours later, she admitted herself to King’s College Hospital, where pictures were taken of her swollen face and body.

Jamaican-born Ms Morris was only 17 years old when she had her first brush with police brutality.

The incident threw her into the forefront of a British, female movement against race discrimination, set against a backdrop of Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech – since denounced as one of the most racist public addresses in modern British history.

She joined the youth section of the Brixton-based British Black Panther movement at the beginning of the 1970s. The group was not affiliated with the Black Panther Movement in America, but shared its focus on improving neighbourhood communities.

In the early 1970s, there were many court cases involving black activists on trumped up charges – including the case of the Mangrove Nine – which were picketed by the activist group.

During the trial of the Oval Four in 1972 – four black men accused of stealing handbags at Oval Station and later found guilty – Ms Morris was arrested after a scuffle with police officers outside the Old Bailey.

She was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm alongside fellow activists Darcus Howe and Abdul Macintosh. But, when it came to their trial, they took a political approach.

They demanded and won the right to a fair representation of black people on the jury, and “the Old Bailey three” were acquitted.

Brixton underwent a housing crisis in the 1970s. Securing a decent home was particularly hard for black families and for many, occupying empty houses – squatting – was a matter of necessity as well as a political gesture.

It was said that Morris turned “squatting into an art form” and would seek out empty homes for homeless families to move into.

Ms Morris and activist Liz Turnbull squatted at 121 Railton Road during the winter of 1972–1973, the then-empty flat above a laundrette.

The duo survived multiple illegal attempts by police to evict them from the property – squatting only became a criminal offence in 2012 – and 121 Railton Road became widely seen as the first successful, and longest running, squat in a private property in Lambeth.

After she and Ms Turnbull moved out in 1973, Ms Morris helped members of the British Black Panthers, the Black United Freedom Party and the Brixton Black Women’s Group to re-squat the property.

A photograph of her climbing up the back of a house is said to have been taken at Railton Road during a roof-top protest.  She reportedly told police that she would stay on the roof, or jump, until they agreed to let the collective have the building.

The image appeared on the cover of the Squatting News Bulletin of 1975 and the Squatters’ Handbook of 1979.

The 121 squat was also the address of the Black Workers’ Movement and Black People Against State Harassment (BASH) and, later, of Brixton Squatters Aid.

In 1978, Ms Morris graduated in social science from Manchester University, worked in Brixton Community Law Centre’s juvenile department, campaigning against the “sus” laws, and co-found the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organization of Women of African and Asian Descent.

But that summer, on a trip to Spain, she felt a sudden pain. Upon her return home she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer.

She died aged 27, on July 12, 1979, at St Thomas’ Hospital in Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth.

Lambeth’s former council officers in Brixton Hill were named after Ms Morris. Olive Morris House was demolished in 2020 and replaced with private housing.

Now, a new blue plaque sits at 121 Railton Road, Brixton.

English Heritage’s unveiling on October 30, coincided with a programme organised by the charity’s youth engagement team in collaboration with three Lambeth-based community and youth organisations: South Central Youth, The Advocacy Academy and The Black Curriculum.

Nick Merriman, English Heritage’s chief executive, said: “Olive Morris was a remarkable person.

“There are more than 1000 blue plaques across the capital but this plaque is a special one, celebrating the life of a young, Black woman who defended the oppressed and the exploited, often in the face of brutality and racism.”

Currently only 4.6 per cent of the plaques within the London blue plaques scheme are dedicated to Black and Asian figures from history.

The Nubian Jak Community Trust have also commemorated Ms Morris with a plaque at number 2 Talma Road, which was the base for The Brixton Ad-Hoc Committee against Police Repression.

Pictured top: Olive Morris (26 June 1952 – 12 July 1979) (Picture: Wikimedia Commons)